Social Issues

Hi everyone. My son Peter is the IT hotshot here. I just write stuff. He tells me we have a lot of regular visitors to the site, so I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for showing an interest in our site, and to wish you a Merry Christmas and a safe New Year. In particular, I would like to send a special ‘Merry Christmas’ to Shiela in Minnesota. Thank you for [...]

It would appear that time has at last run out for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, the two leaders of the infamous ‘Bali 9’, the hard drug dealers with Australian passports who chose to ply their vile trade in a country that had very publicly made it clear what the penalty would be should they be caught. These men had a choice. We all have the same choice. Do we lead our lives, treating our [...]

When asked for their opinion on why, for instance, America got caught with its pants down at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, historians tend to fall into one of two camps – conspiracy or cock-up. One school will argue that the US allowed the Japanese to attack, even pushed them into it; a scenario that must have involved more than one person, therefore (by definition) – a conspiracy. The [...]

When I was young and passionate I was all in favour of capital punishment. Why should killers be shown mercy and compassion when they had shown neither to their victims? Why should they continue to live a full life after depriving others of theirs? Why should society be concerned about their wants and needs when they had already turned their backs on society’s fundamental rules and [...]

About eight years ago I was tutoring a unit called ‘Reinventing Australia’ at Murdoch University in Western Australia when, in a moment of boyish enthusiasm, I asked my students: ‘What does the word ‘Maralinga’ mean to you?’ The response was deafening. Deafening silence that is. You would have thought I had just asked them to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in ten [...]

ANZAC COVE 1915 Most of this entry appears in my book ‘Movies Based on True Stories’, which will be released shortly, but with April 25 fast approaching, I thought it might be the right time to publish something here on the subject of acknowledging ANZAC Day in Australia. Actually, the word ‘acknowledging’ is quite an understatement, given all the media hype [...]

Prince Harry The other day someone said to me, ‘You do not have to always write about movies and movie stars. You can write about other things, anything in fact, because it is, after all, your blog.’ So, for a slight change of pace, I thought I might discuss two of my pet ‘hates’ – political correctness and racism. For many people the two are irreconcilable. You must always [...]